Ongoing ProjectsSome of my ongoing projects and working papers are detailed below. If you have any questions or would like to discuss my work further do not hesitate to contact me.

Thickening and Making Binary Indicators of Democracy More Transparent and Flexible Using the V-Dem Dataset. (with Michael Bernhard, Christopher Reenock, Jan Teorell, and Staffan Lindberg) (Draft)The most popular extant indicator in contemporary democratic survival analysis (ACLP) and its successors are based on a few simple observable criteria. As a measure of a complex multidimensional regime-type like democracy it is relatively thin. For instance, questions of comprehensive adult franchise or whether states have established a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence are not even considered in declaring whether a country is democratic. Other extant measures thicken the criteria used to determine democracy/not democracy, but are more difficult to duplicate due to less transparent coding decisions taken by their authors. In this paper we build a series of increasingly thicker operationalizations of democracy as a set of necessary conditions. It is built on Dahl’s criteria for polyarchy, competitiveness and inclusiveness, as well as Linz and Stepan’s stateness criterion using components from the V-Dem dataset. We then use the relative thickness of the measures built to examine important findings from the literature on democratic transition and survival. We explore the relative weakness of the finding on the endogenous relationship between democracy and development. We argue that by testing the endogeneity thesis on measures that omit suffrage requirements, that the samples used are biased against the finding of an endogenous relationship. We also note that the omitting of a stateness criterion from tests of the exogenous relationship between democracy and development (that development promotes survival) creates samples that include states more likely to fail, and thus diminishes our assessments of the marginal effects of development on democratic survival.

Reconceptualizing Political Relevance: Conditionally Relevant Dyads (with Chrysafis Vogiatzis)For the past three decades the prevailing sample selection strategy adopted by international processes researchers has been that of “politically relevant dyads” (PRDs). This project aims in introducing an alternative sample selection process termed as “conditionally relevant dyads” (CRDs). Although adjacency conveys maximum opportunity for interaction, I argue in favor of a procedure that includes a decaying opportunity formula based on material capabilities and cost of access. My approach hinges on the noncontroversial assumption that more powerful states have greater interaction opportunities that diminish exponentially as a function of the number of access points through which they have to pass to reach their targets, rather than a function of mere distance to the target. Friendly access nodes along the path reduce the costs associated with interactions, thus positively affecting opportunity.

Drawing insights from the literature on optimization research and industrial engineering, I employ a slightly modified network analysis procedure first introduced by Vogiatzis et al. (2015). Specifically, conditional relevance is assessed based on clique – and other cohesive and/or informal cluster – influence given their degree centrality, closeness, and betweenness. The optimization formulation will be semi-parametric in that only power capacity and alliances will be taken into account. The substitution of “political relevance” with “conditional relevance” relaxes the proto-sampling assumptions of IR researchers, thus alleviating inherent selection bias. The proposed alternative is of interest to any type of study were dyadic opportunity is of sampling concern (e.g. conflict, alliance formation, rivalry, dispute settlement, interventions etc.). Most importantly, the versatility of the proposed algorithm allows for selective adjustments regarding the number and nature of its source parameters. Finally, as a quantitative scale, CRDs allow for the employment of cutoff criteria based on individual preferences and can be used either in sample determination or as a control variable.

Territorial Peace Revisited: New States, Territorial Claims, and DemocratizationThe interstate conflict literature has most recently been concerned with “birth legacies” and the effects of state formation processes on the conflict propensity of newly independent states. The patterns uncovered by these efforts indicate that pre-independence violence has a persistent and resonating impact on the future behavior of a new state that is independent of the specific process by which the latter emerged (i.e. decolonization, secession, liberation, or unification). A violent state emergence increases the hazard of future conflict between the new state and any of its neighbors, although the contentious issues over which this bellicose behavior will be expressed have yet to be identified. In this study I attempt to build on these findings and to complement the “territorial peace” theory by focusing exclusively on new states and their adjacent counterparts. I argue that the means by which independence was achieved (violent or peaceful) greatly influence the likelihood of future territorial contestations and the subsequent democratization and peace prospects of the new states. Preliminary findings support my claims for a period spanning from 1816-2008. A peaceful emergence mitigates territorial contestations and border disputes, leading to faster democratization and a lower probability of conflict. Violent state births, on the other hand, are precursors of future dissatisfaction over existing territorial distributions, resulting in a greater frequency of territorial claims that ultimately increase the hazard of future MIDs and hinder democratization. These findings suggest that pre-independence violence is a robust predictor of both territorial confrontations and state development.